Why Victoria Sees So Many Out Of Province Warrants
Someone can’t outrun the Criminal Code by crossing a provincial line, so why does it sometimes feel that way in Victoria? We dig into the real mechanics of out-of-province warrants in British Columbia, including when a warrant applies Canada-wide and when it needs a local endorsement under section 528 of the Criminal Code. Then we get honest about the part nobody likes saying out loud: the decision to return a person often turns into a budget question about flights, officers, and whether the originating province is willing to pay.
We also unpack BC’s fugitive return program, the memorandum of understanding behind it, and the numbers that show how small the program is compared with what police are seeing on the ground. If Victoria Police are dealing with dozens of people wanted elsewhere in a matter of months, what does that mean for local resources, public safety, and the basic promise that the rule of law is applied consistently across Canada?
From there, we shift to a striking BC Supreme Court case that proves accountability does not stop with a criminal conviction. A neighbour shooting leads to a civil lawsuit, a trial conducted from prison over Microsoft Teams, and substantial damages for both the person who was shot and the spouse who witnessed it and develops PTSD. We walk through how civil damages work, why assets like a home matter for collection, and what the court can do to preserve property while judgment enforcement ramps up.
If you find this kind of practical legal breakdown useful, subscribe, share the episode with a friend in BC, and leave a review so more Canadians can find the show. What part of this system would you change first?
Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan is live on CFAX 1070 every Thursday at 12:30 p.m. It’s also available on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Legally Speaking Aug 20 2026
Adam Stirling [00:00:00] As we always are, second half of our second hour with Michael Mulligan, Barrister and Solicitor with Mulligan Defence Lawyers. Afternoon Michael, how we doing?
Michael T. Mulligan [00:00:08] Hey good afternoon, I’m doing great, always good to be here.
Adam Stirling [00:00:11] Some interesting items on the agenda today including some that we have discussed relatively recently, returning people it says with outstanding warrants to other jurisdictions. How does that work especially here in Victoria?
Michael T. Mulligan [00:00:24] Well, it’s an issue I think here in Victoria, perhaps more than other places, because of course this is a nice place to be, right? If you’re going to be a fugitive, you might pick here. To give some idea of the sort of scope and scale of the issue, the Victoria police dealt with 80 people in the first six months of this year, who had outstanding warrants from other jurisdictions. And so far, it would appear that few of those people have any have actually been removed. And so, I thought it would be useful to just provide some context in terms of the legal process involved, the system that’s in place and what might be done to improve how that’s operating. So first of all, it’s important to know that in Canada, the Criminal Code of course is the Criminal Code of Canada, right? It’s the same criminal law all across the country. And so it’s not like the dukes of hazard where you can kind of jump into the next county and escape, the operation of the law in Canada, but It’s slightly more complicated to execute a warrant outside of the province in which it was issued. The way that works depends on the type of warrant that might be outstanding for somebody. Some types of warrants, like for indictable offences and warrants issued by superior courts when, for example, somebody doesn’t show up for their trial, are warrants issued under Section 597 of the Criminal Code, and those are just good all across the country. For other types of warrants, which would be more common, and you can have warrants for somebody’s arrest issued by a court for a variety of reasons, like a warrant of first instance to compel the person to show up for a charge, or other failings to appear in court, whatever it might be. With those the more common type when they’re issued in order to make the warrant effective in another province, you need to have a judge, or a judicial justice endorse the warrant and that’s done under section 528 of the Criminal Code.
Adam Stirling [00:02:21] mm hmm.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:02:22] And essentially, it’s not really an exercise of discretion, it’s the justice or judge determining that the original warrant is like valid properly signed from that other jurisdiction. And then they would endorse it or sign it. And then that’s effective in British Columbia, for example, to get a warrant from Alberta or something, a judge here, a justice could look at that and say, yep, this appears to be a valid warrant issued out of there, initial letter, sign it, and then it can be executed in BC. Now, the practical reality, there are other practical realities which explain why it is, even though there’s a process clearly in place in the criminal code to arrest people and have them returned to face trial in the jurisdiction where they’re alleged to have committed an offence. There is a practical reality, and the practical reality really involves an assessment of the cost of doing that. And the starting point would be that the, the jurisdiction of the person has fled from would ordinarily be asked if the, when the person’s arrested by the police, if they police do arrest them, do you want this person back? And really the question being asked there is an economic one. Do you want to pay for two police officers and three plane tickets?
Adam Stirling [00:03:43] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:03:44] Two of them return one, one way to get the person back there.
Adam Stirling [00:03:46] Exactly. And so when you ask that question. You know if it’s murder, the answer is going to be, yeah. If it’s a yes, if the, it’s not murder, if something else, the answer may well be, no thanks, you can keep him. Now, you could imagine that economic analysis may be a different economic analysis for that original jurisdiction, as opposed to, for example, Victoria.
Adam Stirling [00:04:11] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:04:11] Because let’s say you’ve got somebody who’s, you know, it would not be uncommon if you had somebody who has left other jurisdictions with an outstanding warrant and is now living out at BC.
Adam Stirling [00:04:22] Yep.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:04:22] It’s easy to imagine how that person might be engaged in perhaps other allegations or other activity here or other resources being consumed, dealing with mental health, or dealing with addictions issues or dealing with other criminal conduct that might be occurring here. And so the, and the, from the perspective, conversely from the original jurisdiction, when somebody is phoning up a Crown in Manitoba saying, hey, do you want this person back? You might well imagine no, it would be an appealing answer for many people. No, we don’t really want the guy with five shoplifting warrants, uh, returned to Manitoba. Thanks so much. Effectively by virtue of the, of having escaped Manitoba. They might be quite satisfied with effectively banishment to British Columbia.
Adam Stirling [00:05:06] Exactly.
Adam Stirling [00:05:07] And so that’s pretty appealing. Now here are the numbers, right? And I should say there’s a background to it. In Victoria, if you go back a number of years, it used to be that the downtown business community was paying to do these transfers. And they were paying either cash or donating air miles to fly these people back to other jurisdictions. And that kind of informal process such as it was, was formalized back in 2012 into this thing which was a provincial fugitive return program and there’s this thing which is a memorandum of understanding between various police departments and the RCMP in terms of sort of returning people and there was some funding provided to that program through the civil forfeiture scheme. So they provide, I think, a few hundred thousand dollars a year to that program. To pay for the plane tickets. Now, of those 80 people the police had dealt with in the first six months, that’s just in Victoria.
Adam Stirling [00:06:10] mm hmm.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:06:11] The first 6 months of this year, 31 of them met the criteria which are set out in this memorandum of understanding. And so, for example, when you look at that, the memorandums of understanding makes the person can be considered for the program, it’s not mandatory, but if they’re dealing either with, broadly speaking, violent crimes, and it’s described as things like violence beyond simple assault or beyond threats, and so that could include sexual assault or robbery, things like that. Or where there were serious and sensitive crimes involving undermining the administration of justice, like obstructing justice or a significant number, whatever that is, of failing to appear charges. And if you meet those, if you’re in those criteria, then they may choose to expend the money that they have flying you back. But they don’t have to, and it sounds like not a lot are, to give some stats. There was a report on that program back in 2019 and it was looking at an eight-year period between 2012 and that fugitive return program, which is administered by the RCMP under this memorandum of understanding, that over the eight- year period they had returned 207 people. Which is 25.8 per year on average. And there’s some stats that were provided back in 2019 about where the people were from, like 96 from Alberta, 51 from Ontario, 23 Manitoba, 16 Saskatchewan, 14 Quebec, 4 Nova Scotia, 2 the Yukon and 1 to the Northwest Territories. And so that program is causing that number on average per year. That’s for all of British Columbia to be returned to those other jurisdictions. And in contrast, you know, Victoria City police alone dealt with 80 people during the first six months who had outstanding warrants from other provinces.
Adam Stirling [00:08:01] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:08:02] And so that program only deals with a small fraction of the number of people who are in British Columbia from elsewhere that have outstanding warrants who, from a legal perspective, are subject to being arrested and returned. And so if there was additional funding available to do that, they can simply be returned. And again, that funding assessment, I suspect, is likely to be different from British Columbia’s perspective, certainly a local area like Victoria’s perspective, right, as opposed to how it looks to the Crown Counsel in Saskatchewan or Quebec or wherever it might be. And so, looking at all of this, and I should say, I guess one of the lenses I would look at this through is sort of the respect for the rule of law.
Adam Stirling [00:08:53] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:08:53] And we don’t live in some duke’s a hazard fantasy where you should be able to get across a line and suddenly nothing happens to you. Um, and, uh so, you know, I don’t think it’s unreasonable that the law be sort of uniformly enforced. And if somebody is, has an outstanding warrant, the starting point should be that they should be required to deal with their criminal allegation and not be able to avoid that simply because some other province doesn’t want to spend the money to have the person brought back there and so perhaps given you know the stats in terms of the number of people that in fact are sent back to the other provinces under that fugitive return program. It’s a very small number, and that’s the whole province. It does seem to me that there should be consideration given to funding that. And I’m sure if there was some analysis done of, you know, the number of public resources that are extended on, you probably look at those 80 people, even 80 people who were identified, the police dealt with just in Victoria. I’m sure there could be some economic analysis done to what is the cost of having these 80 people here.
Adam Stirling [00:10:04] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:10:04] I expect my guess would be there’s a fair bit of public resources going into managing even those 80 people, and that’s only in the city of Victoria. And so you may well have a very good economic case for expending money beyond what the limited criteria and limited budget of that fugitive return program that’s in place would allow for.
Adam Stirling [00:10:28] Yeah.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:10:28] And so that’s the state of affairs. So people should know there’s clear legal authority to do it. The people with these outstanding words are clearly identified and the issue would simply be an issue of the funding to do the transport and perhaps it is the case if the government simply isn’t willing to resource that program, maybe it is keys where there has to be some local funding for that so that’s what’s going on those are the numbers and that’s what the legal scheme is that’s in place that would allow for people to be returned if there was money set aside to do just that.
Adam Stirling [00:11:07] Michael Mulligan with Mulligan Defence Lawyers, Legally Speaking, will continue right after this.
[00:11:12] COMMERCIAL.
Adam Stirling [00:11:12] Alright, back on the air here at CFAX 1070, Legally Speaking, continuing during the second half of our second hour on a Thursday. Michael Mullican with Mullican Defence Lawyer, up next on the agenda, it says a civil judgement, a substantial one, I think it says $767,000 it says, for, am I reading this right, shooting a man after the defendant was convicted of criminal offences and jailed for the same thing?
Michael T. Mulligan [00:11:37] That’s exactly right and, you know, listeners will recall, of course, O.J. Simpson, right, who was both was acquitted criminally, but sued successfully civilly for the same murder allegation. And this is a circumstance for the person here who was convicted of a number of firearms offences. It was an offence that occurred out in a Sooke, originally back in 2022. And it sounds like the fact pattern was that this fellow for reasons unknown went over to a neighbour’s house, got into some kind of a scuffle with the homeowner, but he was carrying a loaded .22 caliber rifle that he was not licensed to possess, unsurprisingly and it was jammed in the stomach of the neighbour and the neighbour was shot. And the man was convicted by a jury of a number of offences relating to that, including aggravated assault, discouraging a firearm with intent to wound, and possessing a firearm he was not licensed to have. And so he was convicted by the jury, and he was sentenced to seven years in prison. But that didn’t end the matter because the person who was shot and interestingly his wife who witnessed the shooting both decided to sue him for compensation for their injuries physical and psychological. Now the first thing of course, well not the first of course, but the first you caused me to think about was well, What’s the point of all this? It is not usually the case that suing somebody who is serving a seven-year jail sentence is going to produce any actual money. But here it the explanation for that is you can tease it out of the reasons for judgement It appears this man owns a home, and he was wanting to sell the home in order to hire counsel to help him with this case. But that hadn’t occurred. He hadn’t made any steps to do that. And so it sounds like there was an asset here, which explains why the civil case Would have proceeded because it doesn’t make much sense to litigate Against somebody who has no money. and so that’s the case against him. And interestingly, he’s still in jail, serving his sentence at a Pacific institution, which hilariously, if you look it up on Google, only got two stars, people did not like the food. They got to work on that if they want to, if they want to get their online rating back up, so that’s where he is. so one of the things that the beginning of this trial, the judge had to deal with was that the man Pacific institution with the two-star food. Wanted it adjourned, the trial, because he’s, of course, in prison. And the judge considered that and denied the application to adjourn it on the basis that it had already been adjourned once, waiting for the criminal trial to finish, and that it wouldn’t be just making the people wait here, I guess, seven years from to finish a sentence that no longer be there. And so the trial was to proceed and he was unrepresented. And the judge asked the man whether he thought it necessary that he be attending the trial in person. And he declined that the trials in Victoria. He said no and so the way the trial proceeded is with this man or the convicted fellow shooter Conducted the trial, in person, well himself, but from Pacific Institution via Microsoft Teams. And so the man from prison had this civil trial, that went on for several days, January 5th to 9th, again, here in Victoria. And so the man, interestingly, first of all, didn’t admit that he, until the very end of the trial, that he did shoot the person, he just admitted that he had been shot. I don’t know whether there was some disagreement about, you know, why the gun went off or what caused that, whatever. Anyways, he wouldn’t admit to that until the end, he acknowledged that he shot him. His position was that they had to share responsibility, it sounds like maybe some claim about what caused the gun to go off. But nonetheless, when you’re suing somebody civilly, unlike in a criminal case, it’s not a mens rea thing. It’s sort of a, hey, you shot the person, at the very least in terms of an assessment of negligence. If you’re wandering around with a loaded rifle, having some confrontation with your neighbour, it is overwhelmingly likely if you shoot them that you’re going to be on the hook, at least civilly for that action. And so while the trial proceeded, and the man didn’t admit that the judge at the end of the day didn’t have any trouble concluding that the man was liable for torts of assault, battery, and negligence. And as you mentioned, awarded some total of $767,000 in change, broken down into various things, as civil judgments are. Like there’s a head of damages for what are called non-pecuniary damages, like pain and suffering. But then other elements like lost wages and capacity to earn wages in the future and future care, getting shot in the stomach does not do good things for you. And he was going to have all ongoing issues in terms of his bowels and how things are functioning. They never got the bullet out. It was lodged somewhere in him, and this caused him to have to give up his job. He worked successfully doing, I think, carpentry or siding installation work, but he couldn’t continue to do the physical work, so he had to leave that job, and I think he got job at BC Ferries, but it pays less. And so he was entitled to compensation for the difference in terms of what he would have made and what he will be making. The other interesting thing about the case is that in addition to the man that got shot suing, his wife also sued and she sued on the basis of, so they described as intentional infliction of mental distress.
Adam Stirling [00:17:22] oh interesting.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:17:22] With the idea being that he shot the man in full view of his wife in his own home, which was, as you might imagine, rather traumatic for her. And so she also has PTSD, significant psychological impacts on her. And so in addition to the award to the man shot in the stomach, the wife who witnessed all that wound up with an award of $279,000, comprised of non-pecuniary damages, as well as future care and some smaller amount of wage loss, I guess, time off, given the trauma of seeing all of that. And so they have this judgement and it’ll now be up to them to collect on it. And again having looked at this more carefully unlike many of these things which are just would be an exercise in futile wheel-spinning. The It looks like there is actually a piece of property the man owned, is the neighbour after all so I guess it won’t Be hard to find the house He owned a home and so there was an earlier on in the proceedings. There was actually you could tell there was an order made to preserve that asset to prevent, I guess, from all the money being transferred or spent or something of that sort. And the judge, after finding liability here and setting those amounts also provided that the order preserving the asset, that is to say the home would be kept in place for 120 days following the judgement to allow further process now to no doubt execute on the judgement. Likely getting an order to have the house sold in order to pay off the amount due. So interesting case on a number of levels, including doing it remotely from prison, the fact that you can sue somebody for something where there’s also a criminal conviction. And the liability that can flow not only for the physical harm that somebody suffers as a result of being shot, but the psychological harm by somebody who witnessed the shooting. And so that’s the latest from the BC Supreme Court here in Victoria. And we can see if they’re successful in executing the judgement and collecting the money.
Adam Stirling [00:19:30] Michael Mulligan with Mulligan Defence Lawyers, Legally Speaking, the second half of our second hour every Thursday. Michael, thank you so much. Pleasure as always.
Michael T. Mulligan [00:19:38] Thanks so much, always great to be here.
Automatically Transcribed on September 8, 2026 – MULLIGAN DEFENCE LAWYERS